Cannabis history

1600 - CANNABIS IN EUROPE

In
Europe, during this period, cannabis was cultivated exclusively for
fibers. Muslims introduced the manufacture ofpaper from cannabis, in
1150, first in Spain then in Italy. Cannabis descriptions are found
in many books about plants written in this period, which clearly
state, since the mid 18th century, the distinction between male and
female plants (previously described in a Chinese ideogram in the
beginning of the Christian Era). References to the medical use of
cannabis are scarce. Europeans may have known about the plant's
medical use in the Middle East and Africa, but they confused it with
opium.